


If You Ever Need a Helping Hand

by SylvanWitch



Series: Ain't No Mountain High Enough [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Exhibitionism, Guilt, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-07 22:18:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12241713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: "He's going to see us," Tony panted into Steve's ear.Steve's guilt over lying to their friends is matched only by his reaction to being told they might get caught in the middle of things.





	If You Ever Need a Helping Hand

**Author's Note:**

> The story title is taken from Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."

“He’s going to see us,” Tony panted into Steve’s ear, which was red like his cheeks and his throat and his chest, an embarrassed flush just starting to explore the peaks and valleys of his abdomen.

 

“He’s going to see your cock in my hand and the way you can’t stop grunting like an animal as I jack you off.”

  
“He’s going to see how much you like it when I put my thumb up your ass, how you writhe and beg for it, ‘Tony, oh Tony, ohhhh,’”—Tony did a creditable imitation of Steve trapped in the throes of passion—“the way you moan like a slut when I pull the jizz out of you.”

 

Steve squeezed his eyes shut, bit hard around, yes, a moan, and held his breath as his orgasm plowed through him.  Tony, behind Steve on his knees, pulled his thumb out so he could slide his cock between Steve’s clenching cheeks, and there was a burst of hot air over Steve’s damp back as Tony spewed profanity and then shouted his own release into the air.

 

It turned out Steve kind of liked it when he thought they were about to be caught.  He still didn’t like misleading their teammates, but he couldn’t deny that the idea of someone walking in on them while Tony was working him over or when he was on his knees sucking Tony off or when he had Tony’s legs hooked over his shoulders and was driving into him, watching his face twist as he caught the first wave of orgasm…

 

“Hey, Super Soldier, some of us need a few minutes to catch our breath,” Tony said, giving Steve’s reviving cock a fond squeeze before releasing it and dropping to his side on the bed, head cradled on a bent arm, eyes already lowering for his usual post-coital nap.

 

Steve loved seeing Tony like this, loose and satisfied and vaguely smug, but in a good way.

 

It was almost an acceptable trade-off for deceiving the people he cared about and who trusted him.

 

Steve shook off the thought and glanced ruefully down at the mess on the bed before pushing himself to his feet and padding into the bathroom to clean himself up.

 

He came out a few minutes later with a warm, wet washcloth and cleaned up the worst of the mess on Tony, too, spending a few lingering moments on the love-marks blooming like dark roses across the sweet swell of Tony’s ass.

 

Something clenched in his gut as he looked at them, the same fierce protectiveness he felt whenever Tony launched like a red and gold rocket from the ground.  Here, he could get away with it, as long as Tony’s eyes were closed.  Lost in sleep, he didn’t mind so much when Steve loved him all the way.

 

But out in the field, fighting monsters, well…it was a problem, one that Steve couldn’t seem to solve.

 

And it was getting worse.

 

Steve’s eyes moved lower, taking in the fading bruise, really just a shadow now, across Tony’s lower back.  Steve hadn’t had eyes on Tony when it had happened, when the monstrous tentacle had thrashed into Tony, but he’d seen it later during the debriefing:  The way Tony had folded around it and been thrown backward into the skeletal steel of a skyscraper in progress.

 

Far below, on the ground, Steve had heard a distant clang like a broken bell being rung, but at the time he’d been coordinating with Barton and Natasha, and it hadn’t been until he’d heard a wheezing through his comms that he’d risked diverting his attention from what was in front of him to what was above him and over his shoulder.

 

He’d watched helplessly as Tony had clung to the girder that had knocked the wind from him and left the bruise on his back, watched for moments longer than he could afford, only wrenching his gaze away when Natasha made a hissing noise, and he turned to see her favoring her right arm, a bracelet of blood flinging delicate petals of gore around her as she pirouetted and dove out of the line of Barton’s shot, an explosive round that ripped a tentacle from the thing and left it shrieking and flailing, spewing stinging black ichor in a stinking rain.

 

When Steve had finally looked for Tony again, he’d been gone from his tenuous perch, and for a sickening moment, stomach swimming up into his throat, Steve had been sure he’d fallen, this time with no Hulk to catch him.

 

For a single, searing instant, Steve had hated Bruce for not being there, for sulking like a child in the mountains while the rest of them did their jobs.

 

And then he’d heard the blessed ringing sound of Tony touching down behind him, and it took every ounce of his considerable will not to fling himself at Tony and strip him of his suit piece by piece to see with his own eyes, feel with his own shaking hands that there was no real harm done.

 

Steve snorted bitterly, shaking his head, back in the room again, eyes fixed on that faint reminder of how fatal this relationship could be, not only to the two of them but to their teammates, the ones they were deceiving every time they took one another to bed.

 

It had to stop, but though he might be among the strongest men in the world, Steve didn’t have the strength to do that.

 

Gently, so as not to wake Tony, he trailed his fingers down Tony’s shoulder and arm, along his flank and over his hip, lingering there for a span of several breaths, synching his breath to Tony’s, watching his eyelashes flutter against the thin bluish skin below his eyes.  Tony’s lips were rough and red from their kissing, and there was a faint blush of blood beneath the skin where his jaw met his throat, where Steve had sucked on him hard enough to wring a cry out of him.

 

Steve took a shaky breath and turned away from the bed, going back to the bathroom, sliding open the shower, stepping in and turning on the water full blast and cold, icy needles making him huff and blow out several hard breaths; it hurt, the cold, sucked the air from his lungs until he was panting and shivering, desperate to get away from the brutal arctic wash.

 

When he finally stepped out, his teeth were chattering and his lips were blue, but he was once more himself, in possession of his senses.  He’d mastered, for now, his desire.

 

He stayed in the bathroom, dripping and shuddering, until he heard Tony stirring in the other room.  Then he dried himself off briskly and padded back out to the bedroom, where Tony was sitting up on the side of the bed, head hanging down, rubbing his face with one hand and using the other to brace himself up.

 

“Hungry?” Steve asked.

 

Tony shrugged.  “I could eat.”

 

“In or out?”

 

Tony smirked.  “I’d say we’ve had it both ways today.”

 

“Very funny,” Steve said in his deadpan, I’m-too-square-for-dirty-talk voice.  “Do you want to eat here or go out for dinner?”

 

Tony wagged his head:  _Don’t know, don’t care_.  “Whatever.”

 

“Nat might be back later.”  Steve said it like it could be a warning or a promise.  Part of him wanted her to be standing outside Tony’s door with an accusing look when they finally emerged from their session of afternoon delight.

 

“Let’s hit the town, then.  Mel’s?”

 

It had been a favorite diner of Coulson’s, one of the only legacies he’d left Steve in the short time he’d had to get to know the man before Loki had taken him from them and launched the Avengers in earnest.  Coulson had said Mel’s would remind Steve of his own time, and surely it did:  glass sugar containers with chrome lids, salt and pepper shakers in the shape of fire hydrants and incontinent dogs, and food both greasy and plentiful, no fancy greens or frou-frou coffee flavors in sight.

 

It was also thirty blocks away from Stark Tower and unlikely to be frequented by paparazzi, government agents, or their fellow Avengers.  Eschewing Tony’s usual personal transport, they took a cab to within four blocks of the diner and then walked the final stretch at Steve’s suggestion, enjoying the late afternoon sun and a rare sense of relative anonymity. 

 

Not that they ever made public displays of affection in any case.

 

Except this time, apparently. A block from the diner, Tony shoved Steve into the indistinct, umber twilight of a narrow alley that stank of urine and spoiled meat, his hands already tightening on Steve’s ass to urge him closer, to trap Tony against the rough brick wall, to plunder his mouth, tongues a wicked slide, cock twitching at Tony’s hungry noises.

 

Tony ripped his mouth away to breathe, “They’re watching us,” and Steve made a helpless sound in the back of his throat and bit Tony through his shirt where his shoulder muscles made a swan’s curve toward his neck.

 

Tony grunted and shoved a leg between Steve’s thighs, giving him a solid, hot surface against which to rut.

 

Wrenching himself away was physically painful—the back of Steve’s head met the unyielding wall of the building on the opposite side of the alley—and he ran the back of his hand across his mouth, giving Tony a hard look.

 

“Oh, you love it and you know it,” Tony said, a little snottily, his erection evident in the way he straightened uncomfortably and tried to smooth the placket of his jeans over it.

 

No one was _actually_ watching, of course.  Steve trusted that Tony wouldn’t risk them being publicly outed, particularly not in a filthy alley in the middle of a downwardly mobile neighborhood. 

 

“I do,” Steve answered quietly, reaching out to run his pinky finger down the side of Tony’s hand as he moved back out into the street.  “And you,” he added, quieter still. 

 

It took him several strides to realize that Tony wasn’t following, and when he stopped and looked back, Tony was standing with his head down, hands laced behind his head as if he’d been struck from behind.

 

“Tony?” Steve called, and Tony shook his head.  Concerned, Steve returned to him in two ground-eating strides.

 

“Tony?” he asked again, wanting to reach out and brace Tony by the shoulder or cup his chin to raise his face.  He put all that into his voice instead.  “You okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Tony said at last, though he still wouldn’t look up.  He moved his hands to cross his arms over his chest, clinging tightly to himself.  “You’re not,” he said at last, when Steve had just about abandoned his self-control in favor of shaking Tony until he explained himself.

 

When he looked up at Steve, Tony’s eyes were bright and swimming, though his face was dry.  “This is killing you, just like I said it would, and I’m the selfish son of a bitch who gets off on it.”

 

“It’s not like I don’t get something out of it,” Steve reminded him, blush heating his cheeks, though he knew as he said it that that wasn’t really Tony’s point at all.

“You don’t get what you _need_ , though.  You sure as hell aren’t getting what you deserve.”

 

 _Deserve_ , as Steve had had occasion to learn, was an ominous word best left alone.

 

Steve wanted to assure Tony that he was happy with the way things were, but since he was lying by omission to a lot of people he cared about as it was, he decided not to add another whopper to the pile.

 

He shoved his hands into his pockets to keep from touching Tony, from trying to reassure him by gesture of what he couldn’t say in words.  They were on a public street.  Someone might see.  This time, it stirred absolutely nothing in Steve to imagine it.

 

Steve let out a harsh breath.  “Yeah,” he said, nodding.  “Okay.  Yes, I wish we could tell people.  Yes, I wish we could walk down the block holding hands and share a fork and a slice of pie at Mel’s.  I also know that I couldn’t have either of those things even if we did come out to the world.  We’d be hounded by the media, for one thing, and for another, you’d rather die than be caught being sentimental in public, so…”

 

Steve spread his hands, trying on a smile.  It didn’t fit quite right, but he kept it anyway, hoping it would be enough to get them moving toward Mel’s again and away from the minefield they were tiptoeing through right now.

 

“Yeah, okay,” Tony said at last, shrugging as if to settle his skin more firmly on his frame.

 

They walked the last block in silence, and for once, the happy tinkling of the bell over the door did nothing to make Steve feel better.  The place was busy, with regulars taking up the counter seats and five of the six booths occupied.

 

They sat at the only empty table, which looked out on a street works project.  Since most of the city workers were sitting nearby eating lunch, at least the pneumatic hammer was silent, resting its dusty, saurian head against the curb below.

 

Steve tried to relax and enjoy the atmosphere, which always reminded him of home—his home before.

 

The eponymous Mel—short for Melanie, thank you very much—made a mean open-faced meatloaf sandwich with a tangy sauce that left a phantom flavor in his mouth for hours after a meal.  He’d catch himself licking his lips dreamily whenever he thought about it.

 

Today, it did nothing for him, but he didn’t want to be rude, so he was pushing his food around and glancing up uneasily now and again to watch Tony, who was also pretending to eat.

 

“Something the matter with the food, hon?” Tina asked, popping her gum and scratching at her messy up-do with the eraser end of her pencil.

 

“No, everything’s great, as usual,” Steve answered, giving her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

 

“Getcha more coffee?” she asked Tony, having accepted Steve’s assurance with a shrug and a nod.

 

“No, thanks,” Tony answered, flashing a flirtatious smile, the kind that ran on autopilot when Tony was preoccupied in public.

  
Tina, who was old enough to be Tony’s mother, rolled her eyes and grinned, moving off to the next table with a cheeky salute of her order pad.

 

Tina didn’t recognize them, nor did the woman behind the counter—Stacy—or Mel herself or her short-order cook, Jorge.  They were welcomed as regular customers who tipped well but not extravagantly, as the cuties who came together and always ate the same thing—meatloaf for Steve, turkey club for Tony—and drank milk and coffee, respectively, and sometimes had the pie special.

  
They had come to count on their relative anonymity.  They’d relaxed into their roles as regulars.

 

“I’ll have tea and a slice of carrot cake,” a husky voice said, and Steve didn’t think it was his imagination that the whole place got quiet all at once.  Even the clank of cutlery seemed to dull in air that was suddenly too thick to breathe.

 

“Nat,” he managed at last, voice too hoarse to hide his shame.

 

She slid into the booth across from him, hipping Tony to the window side of the bench seat.  Tina arrived in record time with a steaming cup of tea, a red rose tag settling gently against the side of the chipped white mug.  Beside it, she set a plate with a generous slice of cake.  It seemed to Steve that it was done with infinite care.

 

Then Tina was gone—no wisecracks, no flirting, not even an acknowledgement that Steve was still sitting there.

 

He felt bereft.

 

“How long have you known?” Steve asked at last, when it became obvious that no one else was going to speak, Nat because she was licking cream cheese frosting off of her fork and Tony because he was staring hard out the window, as if he could transform the pneumatic hammer into a suit just by thinking hard enough and disappear into the wide blue forever.

 

At last, she gave an elegant, one-shouldered shrug.  “Long enough,” but lightly, like she didn’t want it to matter.

 

It wasn’t the how long that was at issue.  It was the at all, he supposed. 

 

“You could’ve told me,” she said, her voice carefully devoid of expression.  She wasn’t trying to guilt him—Steve had heard _that_ voice before—but he felt what little meatloaf he’d eaten settling heavy in his stomach.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, glancing at Tony, wishing he’d look at him or Nat or something in this place and time.  Whatever Tony was seeing, it wasn’t anywhere Steve could look.

 

Another shrug, and then a quirk of her lips, a wry smile of the here-and-then-gone variety.  “It’s okay.  Are you happy?”

 

Something in her gaze had shifted.  She was serious—she wanted to know—but there was nothing of the incipient shovel talk in it.  She wasn’t about to threaten Tony for sullying Steve’s virtue. 

 

Even so, the question was enough to bring Tony back to the here and now.  He looked at Steve with a raised eyebrow:  _How ‘bout it, Cap, do I make you happy?_

 

“Mostly,” he answered honestly.  The light in Nat’s eyes changed, and he hastened to add.  “I didn’t like not telling you.”  He made it clear that the pronoun was collective with a gesture.

 

“So why didn’t you?”  But there was something devilish back in her whiskey-over-gravel voice, like a delicious fly jigging along the surface of sparkling water, the gleam of the hook lost in the sun’s cutting glow. 

 

Tony snorted before Steve could answer, shaking his head and saying, at last, “You know it was me, cupcake, so why even bother asking.  Captain Boy Scout here would’ve published banns in the paper if I’d let him.”

 

Natasha’s hand on the fork didn’t so much as twitch, but it somehow looked like a deadly weapon in her long, deft fingers. 

 

Steve said, “Tony,” even as Nat said, “That really the way you want this to go?”

 

“Isn’t it what you were expecting?”  There was challenge in Tony’s voice but weariness also, a kind of soul exhaustion that made Steve’s stomach flip uneasily.

 

“I was hoping you’d man up and say you love him.  Anyone who’s paying attention can see it’s true.  But if you want to act like a petulant child just to sabotage the best thing that’s ever happened to you, I guess that’s your right.  You’d be the dumbest genius I’ve ever met in that case, though, and I was in the Red Room, so that’s saying something.”

 

It was the most Steve had ever heard Nat say, and she delivered her words with a cool matter-of-factness in her tone but something darker and more dangerous in her eyes.  He looked from Tony’s face to hers and back again, helpless to stop what was coming next, holding his breath against it.

 

“You’re right,” Tony said.  He couldn’t quite meet Steve’s eyes, but it was clear from his expression that he meant it. 

 

“I do love him.  And want him.  And like everything else that I consider mine, I don’t like sharing.”

 

Nat snorted and shook her head, clearly not buying this answer either.  Steve kept his eyes on Tony until Tony finally looked up at him and spoke the next words right to him.

 

“Captain America belongs to the world.  He belongs to S.H.I.E.L.D. and the US Army and the Greatest Generation and—” here he waved an impatient hand—“take a number.  But Steve Rogers—my Steve Rogers—I never had to share that.  And I didn’t want to.”  By the end of his confession, even Steve had to strain to hear Tony, despite that they were divided only by the breadth of a table.

 

“I’m selfish,” Tony said, louder and clearly.  “So sue me.”  And he gave a patented Tony Stark shrug.

 

Surprising both of them, Nat leaned over and kissed Tony gently on the cheek and then slid out of the booth in a fluid glide, pausing only a moment to say, “Your secret’s safe with me,” before disappearing as if in a cloud of obscuring smoke, there and then— _poof_ —gone, not even the bell over the door sounding at her passage.

 

Her cake, too, was gone, not a crumb nor smear of cream cheese left to prove it had ever been.

 

“I think we just got the team’s blessing,” Steve said eventually, when it became clear that Tony had succumbed to a kind of emotional shock. 

 

“Or Nat’s, at least.”

 

“Same difference,” Steve answered.

 

It was true.  Nat had that effect on Barton and Banner and even Thor, who though a god from another world still seemed to understand that Natasha could kill him without breaking a sweat or even a nail.  They all seemed to look to her as some kind of arbiter of truth, which was weird given her history, but Steve didn’t feel qualified or inclined to judge.

 

“I think we should tell the rest anyway,” Tony said, and for the first time it didn’t sound like the words had had to be squeezed out of someplace painful and cramped inside of him.

 

“Yeah?”  Steve did his best to keep the hope out of his voice, but he probably failed. 

 

Tony gave him a smile, a real one, warmth and light in his face, laughter lines coming out around his mouth and crinkling the edges of eyes.  Without looking around to see who might be watching, he slid his hand across the table, palm up.

 

Steve said, “Yeah?” again, and this time there was hope and happiness and love in it, enough to draw a curtain around them so it was just him and Tony as Steve took his hand.

 

They sat there like that, holding hands, for a long time, even after Tina came over and left the check, even after the place cleared out and the trip-hammer started its pummeling roar.

 

They parted only long enough to get up and pay the check, and when they got back outside onto the sidewalk, they joined hands again.

 

Steve knew he had a ridiculously goofy smile on his face, and he didn’t care.  He stole a glance at Tony, who was smiling himself, though perhaps it was a little furtive around the edges, like at any moment he was expecting someone with a camera or phone to pop out of an alley and take live video.

 

They caught a cab a few blocks over and held hands all the way to their usual drop-off, a hotel three blocks from the Tower, a hotel they’d used for secret assignations—Tony had a key to the service door in the back and the code to the freight elevator.

 

A block from the Tower, Tony missed a step and came to an abrupt halt, Steve’s forward momentum separating their hands before he, too, stopped.

 

Tony was staring at a familiar, shabby figure with a halo of wild hair and a decrepit duffle bag slung over one shoulder.  He’d just emerged from around the corner and was heading toward them. 

 

“Bruce is back,” Tony said, his voice thinned by strain.

 

“He looks tired,” Steve observed, apropos of none of the things they weren’t saying to each other in that moment.  He waited, willing to let Tony call it, telling himself he’d be fine with whatever choice Tony made.

 

Even so, he startled a little when Tony reached over and took his hand and started to move once again toward the Tower.

 

“He’s going to see us,” Steve whispered for Tony’s ears only, a blush heating his skin at the thought of it, excitement racing along his veins, lighting him up and making his breath short. 

 

God, he wanted Bruce to see them.

 

A lewd, wicked smirk lit Tony’s face.  “I hope he does,” he said, tugging on Steve’s hand.


End file.
